Introduction to Ps-Aristotle's De mundo

Pseudo-Aristotle: On the Cosmos A Commentary edited by Pavel Gregorić and George Karamanolis PUBLISHER 2020 TABLE OF CONTENTS List of contributors 3 Preface 4 Introduction – Pavel Gregorić and George Karamanolis 5 On Philosophy and its Proper Subject (Chapter 1) – George Karamanolis 12 The Heavenly Sphere (Chapter 2, 391b9-392a31) – Karel Thein 24 The Sublunary Domain (Chapters 2-3, 392a31-393a8) – Jakub Jirsa 45 Geography (Chapter 3, 392a31-393a8) – Irene Pajón Leyra and Hynek Bartoš 58 Meteorology (Chapter 4) – István Baksa 88 Eternity of the Cosmos (Chapter 5) – Pavel Gregorić 108 God’s Relation to the Cosmos (Chapter 6) – Gábor Betegh and Pavel Gregorić 127 God’s Many Names (Chapter 7) – Vojtěch Hladký 153 Bibliography 167 2 Pavel Gregorić George Karamanolis Introduction The work transmitted under the title Peri kosmou (De mundo in Latin) is both intriguing and perplexing. It sets out to introduce its addressee – Alexander, “the best of leaders” (391b6) – to philosophy, and it does so by explaining what the universe is like and how it is sustained by God. Though De mundo is no doubt a protreptic, it contains parts which read like dry technical compendia and parts which are carefully crafted in the most elevated literary style. The work explains “the orderly arrangement of the universe” (391b11) by dividing it in two distinct realms, the supralunary and the sublunary. It starts with the supralunary realm of orderly and imperishable things and then proceeds to the sublunary realm, which is subject to all sorts of change and populated by a vast variety of transient things that come into existence and pass away. Chapter 2 focuses on the heavens, describing its shape, arrangement, and material, and then proceeds with a brief description of the main structures that constitute the sublunary realm. Chapter 3 picks that up and examines the arrangement of the earth and the sea. These two chapters present the stable, fixed features of the universe, that is, the features that underlie the order, unity, stability, and coherence of the universe. Chapter 4, by contrast, discusses the many irregular phenomena in the sublunary sphere that are covered by the science of meteorology, as the ancients understood it, that is phenomena such as rain, clouds, rainbows, comets, volcanoes, earthquakes, tides and the like. Most of these phenomena are caused by various oppositions and conflicts, some of them violent and destructive. Chapter 5, however, assures us that the elements are finely balanced and that the conflicts in part actually contribute to the harmony of the whole, much as Heraclitus taught. Thus we learn that the universe truly is a kosmos – a unified, well-ordered, magnificent and eternal whole – despite the opposite powers that continually operate in it. Chapter 6 sets out to explain God as the ultimate cause of the arrangement and harmony of the universe, whereas Chapter 7 is a praise of God, who is one, despite the many names given to it in tradition. The final chapter rounds up the treatise with the picture of God as the dignified ultimate cause of the cosmos and all things in it, great and small. The contributions in this volume largely follow the traditional order of the chapters of De mundo and analyse them section by section. However, since some well-marked topics break the boundaries of the traditional chapters, the volume contains three papers that cover Chapters 2 and 3, each paper dedicated to one topic. To be more specific, Karel Thein’s paper is dedicated to the first part of Chapter 2, dealing with the structure of the supralunary realm made of ether. Jakub Jirsa’s piece discusses the second part of Chapter 2 and the first part of Chapter 3, from 392a31 to 393a8, where the structure of the sublunary realm is described, proceeding from the topmost layer of fire, to the layer of air, and then down to the layers of water and earth in the centre of the universe. Irene Pajón Leyra and Hynek Bartoš look at the second part of Chapter 3, where the organization of the layers of water and earth is laid out; the second part of Chapter 3 thus amounts to a compendium of geography. 3 Of the remaining contributions, each covers one whole chapter of De mundo. George Karamanolis writes on Chapter 1, the shortest of all chapters, but one that sets the tone and the agenda for the remainder of the treatise. Istvan Báksa gives an overview of Chapter 4 which reads like a school compendium of meteorology. Pavel Gregorić explores Chapter 5, where the author argues that the cosmos, despite the disorderly nature of the sublunary realm, is a harmonious, beautiful and eternal whole. Chapter 6 points out that the cosmos requires a sustaining cause and elucidates what this sustaining cause is like and how it is causally operative the world. This is achieved by a long series of interlocking analogies, each one analyzed by Gábor Betegh and Pavel Gregorić. Finally, Chapter 7, illuminated by Vojtěch Hladký, is an ornate discussion of the names of God, which is supposed to underscore the points made about God and his relation to the cosmos, thus rounding off the whole treatise. De mundo clearly has a central thesis that the author aims to establish. The thesis is that the orderly arrangement of the universe has God as its ultimate cause, and therefore we need to have a proper conception of God and his causal relation to the universe in order to gain a full understanding and due appreciation of the universe. The presentation of the structure of the universe, its various segments as well as the salient phenomena in each segment means to show, on the one hand, how diverse, complex and sophisticated it is, and on the other hand that this diversity, complexity, and sophistication cannot hold unless there is a cause that sustains the universe as a whole. This cause, the author of De mundo argues, is God properly conceived. The thesis is not something brought to the reader’s attention at the end of the treatise; rather, the very first chapter announces the need to speak theologically while explaining the universe (theologômen; 391b4). But the author’s objective is more complex than that. By explaining the universe and its cause, the author aims to encourage the addressee to engage in philosophical enquiry; the universe is deemed an appropriated subject to philosophize about, since it is a noble and indeed an excellent thing (391a25). The treatise, then, is not merely an informative overview of the structure of the universe that highlights its ultimate cause, but first and foremost a protreptic to philosophy that aspires to present philosophy as a study of the universe and its relation to God. More precisely, the treatise is both a protreptic to philosophy and a cosmological treatise that aims to explain the world in terms of what makes it what it is, an orderly arrangement, a cosmos. These two features of the treatise are not kept distinct but make up a unity. There is actually an ancient tradition that treats the two, the protreptic to philosophy and the study of the universe, cosmology, as a single endeavour. Anaxagoras is often mentioned as someone who thought that a good human life is dedicated to the acquisition and contemplation of cosmological truths, that is, in understanding the universe as a whole and as the product of nous, the intellect.1 For Anaxagoras, we are told, the practice of philosophy is nothing but the study of the universe, which he considers as his native land.2 This view also permeates Plato’s Timaeus. The study of the universe in the Timaeus shows us what the cause of it is, namely the Demiurge, and the best life for us crucially involves the study of the divine truths (90A-C) - the divine things (ta theia) which the author of De mundo encourages the addressee to study (391a15). This is something that comes up at the end of the Timaeus as a result of the explanation of the universe and of the human nature, both of which are caused by God. 1 2 Aristotle, Eudemian Ethics VII.2, 1216a10-14, Nicomachean Ethics X.9, 1179a13-23; DL II.7, 10. See Anaxagoras fr. A1, 16-18 DK (=DL II.7). 4 The connection between cosmology and philosophy as a way of reaching happiness continues to be strong in the Hellenistic philosophies. The Epicurean view according to which nature is responsible for the universe is tightly connected with the ideal of tranquillity that the Epicureans were after (Cicero, De natura deorum I.53). The Stoics, on the other hand, take the universe to inspire wisdom in us, since it is a wisely ordered arrangement. For them the universe is something divine, permeated by God (Diogenes Laertius VII.138-139). The Stoics actually did not separate the universe and God, but rather suggested that “the substance of God is the whole world” (Dioegenes Laertius VII.148). We know that several Stoics wrote works entitled Peri kosmou.3 According to them, the study of the universe has an important ethical message for us. We find the same idea also in Philo of Alexandria and in early Christian thinkers. For Philo, the study of the cosmos points to its cause, God.4 Early Christians on the other hand take the view that the cosmos is a reflection of God himself, and they suggest, much like the author of De mundo, that the study of the world pertains to theology.5 The cosmos, they suggest, teaches us what kind of being God is, namely wise, loving, providential.6 Yet, while we detect in De mundo a quite widespread intellectual tendency in Hellenistic philosophy and in later ancient philosophy, we have reasons to believe that the author of De mundo is particularly competing with the Stoic view of the universe and of God as its cause. More precisely, the author of De mundo writes his work in order to replace the Stoic theological explanation of the world as an orderly whole organized by a God who is immanent to the world with an Aristotelian one, that is, with an explanation of God’s causal operation in the world along the lines of Aristotle’s theology. We have some evidence that the Stoic and the Peripatetic theology were compared in the Hellenistic period and that each school made an effort to differentiate its position from that of the rival school. For instance, Cicero criticizes the founder of the Stoic school for failing to distinguish his position sufficiently from that of the Peripatetics: There were also some minor points on which he [viz. Zeno] differed from the Peripatetics, but on the central question he agreed that the whole of the universe and its greatest parts were governed by a divine intellect and nature. (De finibus IV.12) Leaving aside the question of our author’s competition with the Stoic view on God and its relation to the world, one of the central points of this volume, which several authors seek to defend in their contributions, is that our author is engaged in advocating a view which is recognizably Aristotelian. This is discussed in detail in the contributions on Chapters 5 and 6 but also, more briefly, below. Another conviction that unites the contributors to the present volume, and which is in a way prior to the one mentioned above, is that De mundo cannot possibly be an authentic writing of Aristotle’s. There is a long debate about the authenticity of De mundo, which started apparently already in antiquity. The treatise was considered to be authentic by Alexander of Aphrodisias and Philoponus, for example, but Proclus voiced his doubts.7 The Renaissance saw a growing number of scholars who questioned the authenticity of De mundo, and since the early 3 See Mansfeld (1992). Such Stoics were Posidonius and Antipater; cf. DL VII.142, 148. Philo, Opif. mun. 2-3. On possible echos of De mundo in the works of Philo of Alexandria, see TzvetkovaGlaser (2014), 137-140, with selected passages in translation in Thom (2014), 203-205. 5 Tertullian, Adv. Marc. I.10.1-4, II.3.2, V.16; Irenaeus, Adv. Haer. II.56. 6 Irenaeus, Adv. Haer. III.24.1-2, 25.1. 7 In Timaeum III.272.20-21 Diehl. 4 5 19th century only a tiny minority took the treatise to be a genuine work of Aristotle.8 In the twentieth century, apart from Gohlke’s obsolete study from 1936, Giovanni Reale argued valiantly in favour of its authenticity in his detailed line-by-line commentary of the work, published in 1974. Reale replied to his (many) critics with the help of Abraham Bos, who had argued for the authenticity of De mundo on independent grounds, in their joint 1995 publication of a revised and expanded version of Reale’s commentary. The most recent volume on De mundo, edited by Johan Thom, also inclines heavily against the authenticity of De mundo.9 We should make it clear from the outset that the question of authenticity is not systematically addressed in this volume. The questions of dating and sources of De mundo are also raised and discussed only sporadically in the pages that follow. Indeed, different contributors may have different views as to the likely dates and sources of De mundo, and we did not press them on these issues. Rather, we believe that these issues have been the focus of the De mundo research for too long, deflecting the scholarly attention from the philosophical value and distinctive features of this remarkable little treatise.10 This is not surprising, but it tends to be the sad fate of all treatises deemed inauthentic. It was a corollary of this debate over authorship and dating that scholars have been strongly engaged with the identification of the sources of the doctrines of De mundo. The assumption behind this Quellenforschung is the idea that the treatise is a compilation of doctrines from others, Peripatetics, Platonists, and the Stoics. Generations of scholars have sought to identify in De mundo doctrines and methods of Posidonius, but also, to a lesser degree, of Antiochus of Ascalon and the Pythagoreans. The present volume does not engage in such a research, either. Rather, it sets out to highlight what is distinctive and valuable in De mundo.11 We believe that the distinctive elements of this work have not been sufficiently appreciated. This is why the present volume is modelled on the structure of the volumes of the Symposium Aristotelicum; it contains a section by section commentary of De mundo that aims to highlight and appreciate what is of historical and philosophical interest in it. We cannot, however, simply pass over the authenticity issue in silence, because this is to some extent connected with the philosophical identity of the work. There are three sets of reasons that speak against the authenticity of De mundo: (i) language and style of the treatise, (ii) particular points of philosophical doctrine, and (iii) the theological doctrine espoused. Perhaps there is a way of explaining each particular of these reasons with greater or lesser plausibility, but cumulatively, we think, they speak decisively against attributing De mundo to Aristotle himself, whichever period of his life one might wish to assign it. (i) As several scholars have observed, we find several unique occurrences and words that are not found before the 3rd century BCE.12 The language is mostly very elevated (Chapters 1, 5, 6 and 7), and at some places very technical (Chapters 2, 3 and especially 4), which also points towards the Hellenistic age. 8 See Kraye (1990). For an informative overview of the disputes concerning the authorship of De mundo, from antiquity to the present day, see Kraye (2014). 10 See the brief outline of the history of scholarship in Thom (2014), 3-17. 11 A favourable judgement of De mundo has not been made only by Reale and Bos, as one would expect, but also by scholars who take the treatise to be inauthentic, such as Thom (2014) and Betegh and Gregorić (2014). 12 See Barnes (1977), Schenkeveld (1991), Martin (1998), Thom (2014), 6. 9 6 (ii) There are many points in which De mundo diverges from Aristotle’s attested doctrines, such as, for instance, the idea that air is moist and cold in Chapter 2, discussed by Jakub Jirsa in his paper, the view that the Hyrcanian and the Caspian seas are the inlets of the one surrounding Ocean in Chapter 3, pointed out by Irene Pajón Leyra and Hynek Bartoš in their piece. Moreover, there are many points which have no parallel in Aristotle’s authentic works, but also points whose omission from De mundo would be extremely puzzling if Aristotle wrote it. For example, there is an interesting note in De mundo on the connection between the tides and the Moon, which is something that Aristotle does not mention in any of his genuine works; on the other hand, there is no mention of the Milky Way in De mundo, whereas Aristotle in his Meteorology invests significant efforts to explain it. These are only two examples coming from Chapter 4, both discussed by István Baksa in his contribution. (iii) The theological thesis of De mundo is somewhat different from that of Aristotle in Physics VIII and Metaphysics XII, yet it is clearly inspired by it. In De mundo God is the cause of the unity and order of the universe, much as in Aristotle, but it is not said to be a form, a pure actuality, or an intellect thinking itself. In fact, the Aristotelian distinctions between form and matter, or between actuality and potentiality, are not present in De mundo. Of course, this can be attributed to the protreptic nature of the work whose target audience need not be immersed into heavyweight Aristotelian metaphysics. Even so, it is surprising that we find no statement of the central Aristotelian ideas that God is an intellect and that he causes motion as an object of desire.13 What is stated and underscored, however, is God’s dunamis which extends from the periphery to the centre of the cosmos. While God himself remains dignifiedly outside the cosmos, his power is present and causally efficacious everywhere in it, although it wanes with distance and the number of intermediaries, which explains increasing disorder in the sublunary realm. This is best seen in contrast with the Stoics conception of God. Pressed by the Stoic conception, the author of De mundo appreciates the need to make God present and operative in the world, yet not so as to jeopardize his dignity. This position is both interesting and philosophically valuable. It is not Aristotle’s position, yet it is an Aristotelian position, that is, a position inspired by Aristotle in the same sense in which many of Plotinus’ positions are not Plato’s but are nevertheless inspired by Plato and are presented with the specific aim to advocate Plato. The author of De mundo is not inspired by Plato or the Stoics in the way he depicts God’s causal nature; he steers between the Platonic view – according to which God, being external to the universe, is its creator and maintainer to eternity, though subject to his will – and the Stoic view, according to which God is immanent and active in the world by permeating every smallest part of it. The God of De mundo is also active in the universe, but not by being immanent in it, as the Stoic would have it. The author of De mundo takes pains to show what God’s causal role in the universe is, and it is for this reason that he goes at great length in Chapter 6 to explain this role by a series of analogies that complement one another and build up a complex picture of God’s causal operation in the universe. Although God is not himself in the universe, he is not outside of it either; he is dwelling “at the uppermost place” (397b24) and is the cause of every motion of the heavens (400b13). The heavenly motions in turn cause changes in the sublunary world, and not only the large, periodic ones, such as changes of season, but also the small, local changes, such as motions of winds, rains, and other atmospheric phenomena, which all cause the growth and 13 In their paper on Chapter 6, however, Betegh and Gregorić detect possible hints at these two central theological ideas of Aristotle. 7 regulate the behaviour of living beings. God’s power thus seems to amount to this uninterrupted causal chain from the topmost heaven to the depths of the earth. Although these three sets of reasons speak decisively against Aristotle’s authorship, they do not allow us to say much about when De mundo was written or by whom. If pressed, we would date it between the second half of the 3rd century BCE and the first half of the 1st century BCE, though a later date cannot be excluded. As for the author, we have no grounds even to speculate, though it must have been a remarkably well-educated person who knew a lot about various sorts of philosophy, but cherished Aristotelian philosophy above all others. But, again, the question of dating and authorship is not the primary concern of this volume. As we have shown, and as some of the contributions will argue in more detail, the picture of God presented in De mundo is essentially Aristotelian. Like Aristotle’s God, the God of De mundo accounts for the stability, eternity and indestructibility of the universe without being involved in the events of the sublunary world.14 This particular view of the extent to which God is involved with the world was recognized as characteristically Aristotelian in the Hellenistic and early imperial age, and it stands in sharp contrast to the views of the Stoics, of the Platonists, and of the Epicureans.15 However, and this is what we find significant, the author of De mundo presents this view without openly criticizing the competing views of other philosophical schools. Quite the opposite, he seems to adopt a reconciliatory tone. He explicitly and charitably refers to Heraclitus (396b20) and to Empedocles (399b26), and he ends the treatise with a generous mention of Plato (401b23); indeed, allusions to Plato can be detected also in other parts of De mundo, most notably in Chapter 1. This, however, does not mean that the author of De mundo was an eclectic, as has often been argued.16 The author of De mundo seems to be a committed Aristotelian. For, not only are his views on the cosmos, God, and the relationship between them essentially Aristotelian, but he makes a lot of effort, as George Karamanolis shows in his contribution, to pass the treatise as Aristotle’s. At the same time, however, the author does not want to exacerbate the differences between the Aristotelian and other philosophical schools. Polemics is the unappealing side of philosophy and it has no place in a protreptic to philosophy. To conclude, the presented picture of the cosmos and God actually teaches us something, namely that order and harmony are beneficial for us. And this is what philosophy through the study of the cosmos encourages. If this is what the author of De mundo aims to achieve, he may be adopting a grand philosophical perspective proposed by Plato and made prominent in Stoic philosophy – namely, the perspective based on the idea that the cosmos itself offers a powerful lesson in wisdom. The author of De mundo shows very convincingly how an Aristotelian could embrace that idea. The defence of theoretical life at the end of the Nicomachean Ethics as the best kind of life might well consist, as it turns out from De mundo, in a contemplation of the universe and its cause. Whatever we make of this little treatise at the level of detail, it is an interesting presentation of Aristotelian cosmology and theology, with a helpful digest of geography and meteorology. Most generally, it can be read as an introduction to some central tenets in ancient philosophy, abounding with examples of elevated style and memorable analogies. 14 One notable exception seems to be the story of the lava splitting so as not to harm the pious young men who carried their parents on their backs (400a34-b6). This story is discussed by Betegh and Gregorić in their contribution to this volume. 15 See Sharples (2001) for a detailed characterization, variations and ancient reception of the Aristotelian view. 16 See e.g. Duhot (1990). 8 We hope that the contributions to this volume will help the readers to appreciate De mundo at all of these levels. 9